5 Helpful Tips for Creating the Perfect Welcome Greeting

First impressions count both in life and in business. When a client or a potential business partner makes contact with you for the first time, it’s essential that they are met with the perfect welcome greeting that ensures the best impression is made right from the word go.

There’s no substitute for presenting your business professionally to the world. While you may think that something like a welcome greeting is simple, leveraging your greeting to its full potential requires some consideration.

Here are our 5 helpful tips for creating the perfect welcome greeting for the auto attendant phone system, ensuring you make the maximum impact on all callers as you embark on the journey towards turning them into paying customers.

5 Tips to Create the Perfect Welcome Greeting

1. Identify Your Business and Yourself

Your callers need to know first and foremost that they have dialed the right number, and the only way you can guarantee this is by identifying your business or yourself at the start of the welcome greeting.

It’s important to add the personal touch, so giving your name as well as the name of the business will go a long way towards a great first impression – no one likes talking to robots.

A further benefit of a concise introduction is that you will cut down on the number of calls or messages from people who have dialed the wrong number.

2. Help Your Callers – Let Them Know What Information You Need

Speaking to an answerphone is difficult. Callers get flustered and don’t know what to say, and can often forget to leave the most important information – like what number to use to call them back.

So help out your callers. If you need an order or reference number, make sure to include this instruction in your message. Ask them to leave their name, number, and the best times to call them back. This will help you streamline your call-back processes, meaning that you will waste less time making calls that never get answered.

3. Be Unique, and Smile when You Record Yourself

Great first impressions are made when the caller can immediately perceive the unique personality of your unique brand and business.

Don’t be shy. You might be introducing your business, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t be human. If you can, inject a little fun and wit into your welcome greeting. If you’re able to make your caller smile even before they’ve had a chance to speak to you, then you are immediately warming them towards your company.

And with smiling in mind, make sure that you smile yourself when recording your message. We can hear when someone’s smiling on the phone, and the tone it creates is one of warmth, friendliness and trust – exactly the stuff that great first impressions are made of.

4. Write Out and Rehearse Your Script

The last thing you want is for your welcome greeting to be littered with “ums” and “ahs” as you forget what you’re trying to say. It’s simply unprofessional.

A clear and concise script will eliminate this danger, and a few rehearsals will ensure that your message sounds natural. Indeed, just because you are reading from a script, you don’t want to sound like that’s what you’re doing, as this depersonalizes your greeting.

5. Frequently Update Your Welcome Greetings

As with most things, the best way to keep your welcome greetings interesting is to keep them fresh. Not all of your callers will be first-time callers, so it’s important that you think about subsequent impressions as well as the first one.

Of course, if you’ve got updated offers you want to promote, then these can be inserted into new welcome greetings as well. And don’t forget to create a bespoke message for times when you will be away for extended periods, as this is helpful information for callers who want to know when they can expect their calls to be returned.